News: Medical Malpractice Insurance and Physician Practices

http://www.marketwatch.com

A.M. Best Co. has released a new methodology, “Securitization of Period-Certain and Life-Contingent Structured Settlements,” which describes how A.M. Best rates securitizations collateralized by structured settlements.

A structured settlement is an agreement between a claimant and a defendant, whereby the claimant agrees to settle a lawsuit in exchange for periodic payments to be made by the defendant to the claimant over time. Structured settlements are a popular method for settling personal injury, product liability, medical malpractice and wrongful death cases. The defendant discharges its obligation by purchasing an annuity from a highly rated life insurance company.
Read the rest of this entry »

Web posts offer insight into the profession, but also raise patient privacy issues.

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

For physicians of a certain age, the weekly teaching session known as grand rounds is a ritual steeped in formality and tradition. Presided over by the profession’s graybeards, grand rounds are attended with white coats on and clinical details in hand.

Here, young physicians learn to accept their elders’ old-school admonishments with reverence and humility.

Grand rounds on the Internet, however, is another thing altogether. A weekly compilation of the Internet’s best medical blog postings, it is part classroom, part locker room, part group therapy session and part office party — a free-wheeling collection of rants, shop talk, case studies and learned commentary (along with the occasional recipe, movie review or vacation slide show). Read the rest of this entry »

Admission to Miami-Dade College’s trailblazing midwifery program was suspended Friday — a sign of the financial challenges afflicting MDC and other schools.

BY ERIKA BERAS
http://www.miamiherald.com

In another sign of the hard times in higher education, Miami Dade College said Friday it was suspending its innovative midwifery program — because not enough students had paid their $7,000 course tuition in advance.

‘’This is not an easy decision,'’ said Juan Mendieta, spokesman for the college. “But when we’re facing budget challenges this is the decision that has been made.'’

The suspension of admissions — existing students can finish up their studies — leaves prospective students scrambling to come up with backup plans.

‘’I wanted to be a midwife since before I knew there was such a profession,'’ said Melissa Palacios, 21, of Miami, who had been studying education at the college. Palacios paid the fees up front and said she is unsure about her future. Read the rest of this entry »

Doctors at Long Island College Hospital Dissent From Continuum Plan

By E.B. SOLOMONT, Staff Reporter of the Sun
http://www.nysun.com

A cash-strapped Brooklyn hospital will stop delivering babies, aiming to regain its financial footing and reduce its escalating medical malpractice costs.

Long Island College Hospital, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood, plans to shutter its obstetrics department pending approval from the state’s Department of Health, hospital officials said yesterday. Last year, the hospital delivered 2,800 babies, and it is on track to deliver about 2,200 this year.

Officials from the hospital’s parent company, Continuum Health Partners, said they made the decision in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. The Brooklyn hospital has accrued $170 million of debt, with the obstetrics department accounting for 33%, or $11 million, of the hospital’s losses each year. Malpractice insurance costs for the obstetrics department, $8.8 million each year, represent 40% of the hospital’s overall malpractice insurance costs, about $22 million each year. The hospital will retain a gynecology practice. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.kaisernetwork.org

Rural areas in Maryland likely will experience severe shortages of physicians by 2015 as physicians begin to retire and younger physicians decide to practice elsewhere, according to a report by the Maryland Hospital Association and MedChi, the state’s medical society, the AP/Baltimore Sun reports. According to the report, the shortage would have the greatest effect on crowded emergency departments that depend on medical specialists who work on call. Southern Maryland would face “critical shortages” in about 83% of 30 physician categories, followed by Western Maryland with 67% and the Eastern Shore with 60%, the report found.

The report included a number of legislative recommendations to address the situation, including increasing physician payments from insurers, overhauling the state’s medical malpractice system and creating a loan-forgiveness program to attract younger physicians to the state’s rural areas. Robert Barish, vice dean for clinical affairs at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and chair of the report’s steering committee, said, “It’s very worrisome that only about 25% of our physicians are saying they want to stay here,” adding, “In part, the No. 1 factor among residents right now is they want to be close to home.” The report does not include cost estimates of any of the recommendations.

The report is being reviewed by two government panels that are working to develop recommendations to address the problem, the AP/Sun reports (AP/Baltimore Sun, 7/28).
see original

By Marion Davis
Contributing Writer
http://www.pbn.com

In today’s health care environment, spending a full hour to discuss your health with a physician is virtually impossible. And don’t even think that you could call one on a Sunday and have the doctor meet you outside the Little League field, stethoscope in hand, to examine your child.

Yet, that is what it’s like to be a patient at Barrington Family Medicine, opened last January by two doctors and mothers who wanted to practice medicine the old-fashioned way: one-on-one, unrushed, built on real relationships with their patients.

But Doctors Lisa Denny and Andrea Arena are trying a different approach: focus on the bottom line, not the top.

Following a model developed by Dr. L. Gordon Moore, a doctor and health care researcher in Rochester, N.Y., they are building a “micropractice.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Juon , Editor, NewsoftheNorth.Net

It may seem like a step back in time when you look at the solo practice which Drs. Kim and Brian Erdmann, both internists, have established. There is no question they are bucking a trend of the past few decades in which physicians have abandoned solo practices en masse to join large clinics.

The Erdmanns both have been employed by a large healthcare provider, working for Ministry Medical Group for a number of years in urgent care and internal medicine. But they decided to try another approach.

“We respect what the large medical facilities offer,” says Brian. “For us, however, it’s a desire to have a more personal relationship with our patients and a better quality of life for ourselves.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Juon , Editor, NewsoftheNorth.Net

It may seem like a step back in time when you look at the solo practice which Drs. Kim and Brian Erdmann, both internists, have established. There is no question they are bucking a trend of the past few decades in which physicians have abandoned solo practices en masse to join large clinics.

The Erdmanns both have been employed by a large healthcare provider, working for Ministry Medical Group for a number of years in urgent care and internal medicine. But they decided to try another approach.

“We respect what the large medical facilities offer,” says Brian. “For us, however, it’s a desire to have a more personal relationship with our patients and a better quality of life for ourselves.”

In December 2007, the Erdmanns established Priority Medical Partners (PMP). They rent space at 140 S. Brown Street in Rhinelander, in a building owned by Randall Natrop, a dentist. And the space they rent is very small: one room, in fact. Read the rest of this entry »